The Food and Beverage (F&B) industry is always thriving and growing in Malaysia. There has been a steady increase in boutique cafes and restaurants in the past few years as patrons become more aware of quality food and good ambiance.
Advertising in F&B outlets is effective mainly because they provide avenues for advertising that targets a specific group mainly foodies.
Reaching the target audience in F&B outlets
Whether you are a restaurant or café owner, there will be bound to be locations within your premises that could have advertising potential. That said, will advertising in these spots be effectively and have the desired effect? Would it be impactful? To answer these questions, you must consider the following:
- Who are the patrons of the café? Which demographic do they belong to?
- What are the buying habits of the patrons of the F&B outlet? This is usually related to their income bracket.
- What products are you selling and do they resonate with the patrons of the outlet?
Target market crucial
If you are planning to launch ads to be placed at the F&B outlets, the cost is one factor that you must seriously consider as it might affect your overall marketing budget. The target market of your ad will be extremely important. When your ad is placed in the F&B outlet, your brand message is communicated to the group of patrons that are usually from a certain demographic.
Types of media in cafes and restaurants
In restaurants and cafes, there is a lot of potential for advertising on every corner of the premises. This includes:
- Posters – This usually involves posters of various sizes. They can be seen pasted on the walls of restaurants and in some cases outside along the front entrance.
- Murals – This type of media is effective because they are customized and designed to promote a certain product. In F&B outlets, murals are common and are usually taken up by suppliers of the ingredients of the food served.
- Standees – The most popular type used in this form of advertising are table standees. They are very engaging as patrons spend an average of 30 minutes at every table (depending on the restaurant or café). Table standees can be single-ad items or they can be flipped offering more ads.
- Toilets – Product placement (like tissues) and advertising in toilets of F&B outlets are popular and effective. Usually, in the toilet cubicle (behind the door) and above urinals, the ads can have quite a long-lasting attention span (averaging 2-5 minutes).
- Receipts – This is a popular option among retail businesses and will surely have advantages to drive future visits among customers.
- Signboards – Brand owners would always sponsor signboards for F&B outlets. The ones most commonly seen are the beer brands that sponsor seafood restaurants. Besides that, there are a lot of other opportunities with brand-owned signboards that can be strategically placed within the F&B outlet.
- Menu – Every guest who sits down at a restaurant or café must browse through their menu. Certain ads can be placed in specific locations within the menu which can be useful for brand recall and top-of-mind marketing.
- Tabletop stickers – These types of ads are powerful as they continuously remind the customer at the table. What makes them effective is that the ads can engage the customer through QR code advertising, shortcodes communication or drive traffic to their websites.
- Wi-Fi – Cafes are popular places among Gen Z and millennials and Wi-Fi is a must-have at these places. When logging in, ads on the landing page will have a lot of mileage for the brand owner as every customer will need to visit this page before gaining access somewhere else.
